Roy

No, I'm not selling up!
I was an 'accidental' landlord, I was posted abroad and had a property sitting empty so I thought I might as well rent it out.
Because I was only playing at it, amateur at best, and being an overseas landlord, made things tricky. If it's done properly, it's still a lucrative business.
Never rent your house out on a handshake! 
I'm giving it to an elderly relative who is finding things tough in the current environment, so it still remains 'on the books' so to speak.
😊
 

The property I mentioned at the start of this topic has been finished and new tenants are in. I gave the property to the local authority for their refugee program. 6 years after they move in the house is destroyed. Even had to replace the floor/ celling joists in the bathroom (pictures are on p1). 10 months later and about £20,000 has been spent in there. As a settlement for the damage done whilst it was in their care they have offered me £7,800 and tried to say the rest would have been wear and tear. 
My advice to anyone thinking for getting in to the rental sector is don't. To everyone in it if your not a limited company get out. It never used to be this way, but now. The tenants, the local authority, any un-familiar trades ( decent ones are all retiring), the banks and the general public (wither they rent, own or defiantly living with parents) are all out to shaft you. Get out if you can. Source an exit plan if you can't.
Environmental reg's (EPC's C rating or above soon). Rumblings over rent control. The list goes on. I have even spoken with a councillor that was mad keen on the local authority having mandatory allocation rights of the private rental sector in certain areas or wards. Reminds me of when Corbyn advocated taking possession of the big universities (Ox-bridge). Give it 20 years and housing stock will only be in the hands of large corporations, social landlords or the remaining small amount of council owned housing.
Struggling with seeing any point to it all. Remember you'll own nothing and be happy.
 

No here is another person who doesn’t like grey and white - depressing 😁.
Gardenia, the best colour, everyone thinks it’s magnolia.
We got out of letting years ago, how many lunatics can you tolerate 🤣

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Merry, merry king of the bush is he,
Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra
Gay your life must be.
 
(still taught in schools today! edited, naturally)

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Merry, merry king of the bush is he,
Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra
Gay your life must be.
 
(still taught in schools today! edited, naturally)

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Merry, merry king of the bush is he,
Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra
Gay your life must be.
 
(still taught in schools today! edited, naturally)

Hi all, 
After collecting a few Gold and Silver bullion coins to hedge against inflation (so I told myself), I bagged a couple of late year kookaburras. Wow... I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship and something more than just precious metals. 
 

Feel free to ask any questions.  I have the complete date run of Kooks (but not all of the Privy editions - yet) plus some of the other sizes.  
The high relief Kooks are particularly nice!
Feel free to ask anything!

So others will definitely be knowledgable than myself on the topic, but for what it’s worth, there are quite a lot of Privy’s (great for collecting over the long term).  I have a strong suspicion that out there may be some Kooks that were minted for the purposes of the mint - in v small numbers.  
Why do I think this?  I have visited the Perth Mint quite a few times. Around the PM are dotted coin dealers.  I visited all that I could in the hunt for some specific Sovs.  I also asked about rare Kooks.  One of the dealers said that he had seen a Kook that was not listed in any of the reference materials - a guy bought it in for valuation with other coins.  He couldn’t remember exactly what it was minted for but thought something like a prototype that was given to staff or a staff issued kook.   Definitely worth keeping an eye out for.  
 
On the high relief Kooks, these are hard to find in the U.K. but very much worth obtaining if you can - beautiful coin.  More seem to exist in the U.K. and Australia than in Europe.  
 
All the best
Dicker

There was a valiant effort on the forum a while back...
😁

You could have any of this for spot (58p/g of pure) Plus postage.
There is 226.92g in total but you wouldn't have to have it all.
All hallmarked Sterling, no steel/solder/glue. All would easily hammer flat.

Silver and gold were quite valuable and plentiful supplies of precious metals weren't so thick on the ground in medieval Europe, so medieval coins tended to be quite small.  Some folks didn't bother to do gold coins at all - for example, Charlemagne had something of a downer on gold coins and didn't issue any.  Larger silver coins like thalers didn't get super widespread until later, and they were largely used for trade.
It wasn't until large gold deposits were found in Guinea (hence the eponymous coin) that large scale issues of gold coinage became a thing. Larger silver coins such as thalers became popular with the discovery and opening of larger silver mines which didn't happen until the tail end of the 15th century; before that silver coins such as groats maxed out at about 6g.  The plentiful supply of gold and silver from the new world was a big deal because the supply in Europe wasn't all that large.

I am led to believe that people in medieval times spent much less time staring at screens and phones and so, yes, probably had better eyesight.

Had a rather boozy lunch with a former colleague/current pal.
The conversation drifted towards CBDCs and he had a unique perspective:
It doesn't matter what we think about CBCDs, it's going to happen, and don't think we can make a change- they (WEF?) aren't interested in us as customers, our money is no good.
He put forward this thesis:
Perhaps 25% of the world are unbanked.
There are 8 billion people in the world and 9.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions.
1 billion women do not have a bank account.
Digital payments could help empower women and encourage their economic participation.
 
Unbanked developing countries/pp %
Vietnam 69% 
Philippines 66%
Mexico 63%
Indonesia 51%
Brazil 30%
Russia 24%
India 20%
China 20%
SA 31%
USA 7%
 
We are not the intended customer base!

The most common payment type in mainland China is WeChatPay, with AliPay probably being a distant second place. These form of payments are similar to PayPal but you pay via an App on your smartphone. Since March 2023, I have travelled into four provinces inside of China.  At supermarkets, I either pay with cash or via the AliPay app.  Where all this facial recognition and cbdc at supermarkets comes from I have no idea. 
It's one thing seeing a couple of videos on China versus actually being there yourself on the ground. There are too many armchair experts around for my liking. 

The wallet doesn't need to have that function, if you make purchases of less than $800 dollars then you don't even need kyc, all you need is a phone number. I remember about 15 years ago flying into Cuba getting a retna scan, the tech has been around for years, it's even linked to our passports. If it was for political reasons then it's no different to Nigel ferage having his bank accounts stopped. That function is available now. 
 
This has nothing to do with cbdc's. Infact it probably promotes that it's a better alternative rather than traditional banking. 
Is this cbdc? Can't tell, if not then the current system is failing. 
 
Not cbdc (you would make a good lawyer)
 
You really don't like China. 
 
 

Had a rather boozy lunch with a former colleague/current pal.
The conversation drifted towards CBDCs and he had a unique perspective:
It doesn't matter what we think about CBCDs, it's going to happen, and don't think we can make a change- they (WEF?) aren't interested in us as customers, our money is no good.
He put forward this thesis:
Perhaps 25% of the world are unbanked.
There are 8 billion people in the world and 9.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions.
1 billion women do not have a bank account.
Digital payments could help empower women and encourage their economic participation.
 
Unbanked developing countries/pp %
Vietnam 69% 
Philippines 66%
Mexico 63%
Indonesia 51%
Brazil 30%
Russia 24%
India 20%
China 20%
SA 31%
USA 7%
 
We are not the intended customer base!

Had a rather boozy lunch with a former colleague/current pal.
The conversation drifted towards CBDCs and he had a unique perspective:
It doesn't matter what we think about CBCDs, it's going to happen, and don't think we can make a change- they (WEF?) aren't interested in us as customers, our money is no good.
He put forward this thesis:
Perhaps 25% of the world are unbanked.
There are 8 billion people in the world and 9.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions.
1 billion women do not have a bank account.
Digital payments could help empower women and encourage their economic participation.
 
Unbanked developing countries/pp %
Vietnam 69% 
Philippines 66%
Mexico 63%
Indonesia 51%
Brazil 30%
Russia 24%
India 20%
China 20%
SA 31%
USA 7%
 
We are not the intended customer base!

I would not really call bitcoin failed, unless for daily commerce as you say.
but then again do we use T-bills or gold bars to buy groceries?
it has found a use case as store of value and it is quite good at that.
expanding it to more use cases would not work

Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing. 
Basically it is all about tapping into a new source. 
Quite coincidentally, bitcoin is also advocating about the participation of the unbanked (as "permissionless" system)

Had a rather boozy lunch with a former colleague/current pal.
The conversation drifted towards CBDCs and he had a unique perspective:
It doesn't matter what we think about CBCDs, it's going to happen, and don't think we can make a change- they (WEF?) aren't interested in us as customers, our money is no good.
He put forward this thesis:
Perhaps 25% of the world are unbanked.
There are 8 billion people in the world and 9.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions.
1 billion women do not have a bank account.
Digital payments could help empower women and encourage their economic participation.
 
Unbanked developing countries/pp %
Vietnam 69% 
Philippines 66%
Mexico 63%
Indonesia 51%
Brazil 30%
Russia 24%
India 20%
China 20%
SA 31%
USA 7%
 
We are not the intended customer base!

Had a rather boozy lunch with a former colleague/current pal.
The conversation drifted towards CBDCs and he had a unique perspective:
It doesn't matter what we think about CBCDs, it's going to happen, and don't think we can make a change- they (WEF?) aren't interested in us as customers, our money is no good.
He put forward this thesis:
Perhaps 25% of the world are unbanked.
There are 8 billion people in the world and 9.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions.
1 billion women do not have a bank account.
Digital payments could help empower women and encourage their economic participation.
 
Unbanked developing countries/pp %
Vietnam 69% 
Philippines 66%
Mexico 63%
Indonesia 51%
Brazil 30%
Russia 24%
India 20%
China 20%
SA 31%
USA 7%
 
We are not the intended customer base!

It's like the silver forum has advertised for new members in the daily mail. 
Running around frightened of the future must be exhausting. Nut job YouTube channels is not research. Countries have to keep up with the tech on the market. Most people in China use alipay, 1.3 billion users. There is we chat too. Ai is around the corner, so using bit of paper as a medium of exchange dying out regardless of cbdc's. 

Gilts are rising sharply - higher than when Liz Truss was briefly the PM and the bond market threw a fit causing pension funds almost to collapse.
Rising gilt rates mean rising mortgage rates. Rising mortgage rates mean falling property prices.
Follow the TSF advice - buy sovereings - i hear lots of chatter about a gold reset coming out of BRICS. Higher gold and lower house prices are a nice thing to behold when you are in a rented property sitting on piles of gold. Hence i say an option is to sell whilst the going is good and rent.
It's a gamble as with all such things. 

I had a Granda like your gran. Very wise people. Told me a lot more than my parents did.
I've just noticed I've got 500000 eagles missing from my stack too.